A Love-Hate Relationship

We Filipinos have a love-hate relationship with the United States.   When I was a teenager, I have seen many protests where the effigies of Uncle Sam and US flags were burned in the public plaza. During that time, I would often hear protesters shouting that the United States is “imperialists” or “new colonizer.” While on the other hand, Filipinos would want to live in the US to pursue their dreams in the land of opportunities.

Nowadays, Filipinos continue to have this love-hate relationship with the United States. This time it is not played out on the streets but the social media.

I am amazed by how things are happening in the United States after the 2020 presidential election. I have never imagined that this great nation will be in trouble because of an election accused of being fraught with fraud.

I thought this is only possible in places where authoritarian dictators controlled the elections, and most often, it is the contender who is calling the fraud.  Now it is the incumbent US president who clamored about fraud or accusing the state election officials committing allegedly election frauds with dead people voting with ballots are being filled in favor of one candidate. I thought that this scenario is only played out in other countries but not in the United States.

After it was projected that Biden won the election, the Philippines’ social media was abuzz with posts inviting Filipinos to replicate the Biden victory in the Philippines. I am not sure what they are thinking about, but I believe it is about removing “popular authoritarianism” that they accused Trump.

Another possibility is that these posts are assuming that Biden’s victory is due to the high turnout of young people who voted for Biden. So, these posts are appealing to young Filipinos to register and vote for the 2022 Philippine election.

I am not sure how this call will result in the Philippines. In the US, Trump was literally “demonized” by the mainstream media. They have portrayed Trump as someone who endangers democracy in all imaginable ways. There is no such thing here in the Philippines. The Philippine president remained in the good books of Filipinos. If the polls are to believed, his approval rating is very high among the Filipinos. COVID-19 has not eroded his popularity. Unfortunately, you cannot say that for Trump.

Biden is a Catholic by “culture” as he claimed himself, but he is a staunch supporter of abortion.

I am not interested in who will eventually be proclaimed as the next US president in January 2021. What perked my attention was that Filipino “thought-leaders” and “influencers” think that the Philippines and the US are the same. No wonder some would follow the US’s trend calling themselves as “woke” and would also take the same ideological advocacy as those in the United States.

This has been going on for some years. For example, young Filipinos would also appropriate for themselves whatever they read about “Millennials” in social media, claiming that they are also such. However, those descriptions are for “American Millennials,” not for Filipinos.

Now that the political wind in Washington D.C. is changing directions, indeed, the rest of the world will adjust to these shifting realities. Whatever happens in the US will always have repercussions for the rest of the world.

This is also true to what is happening in terms of culture. Many of our researchers and influential teachers were trained in the US or influenced by American academes. Therefore, it is not surprising that many of the ideas that they are teaching are imported to the country from liberal American universities and thinkers.

I believed that Filipino students should be taught how to think rather than parroting whatever their teachers are feeding them, mostly American liberal ideals. The media is another giant who is shaping our minds. These tech giants are now censuring ideas that are contrary to their ideological agenda.

I hope that we will not become like the Americans who claimed that they are “tolerant” but would not allow free flow of ideas. I hope that Filipinos would truly think as Filipinos and not merely follow whatever is trendy in the United States.

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